by LJ Ross
“Agreed.”
“Even if it wasn’t Gregson or his wife, it’s reasonable to assume that whoever sent you that message on Sunday got rid of the phone fairly quickly afterwards,” MacKenzie said. “Regardless of whether it’s at the bottom of the river now, for our purposes it corroborates your story. It’s good enough to know that you couldn’t have been in two places at the same time.”
“It’s interesting, don’t you think, that whoever sent me the message chose to send it from the vicinity of Gregson’s home?” Ryan crossed his arms and leaned back against Anna’s desk while he mulled it over.
“Somebody pointing an arrow in Gregson’s direction, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“I could have sent the message to Ryan, if we were in it together,” Anna broke the brief silence, and four heads turned in her direction. She held her hands up. “I was only thinking aloud!”
“Strewth, woman, are you trying to have me arrested again?” Ryan joked.
“Chance would be a fine thing,” she muttered darkly.
“Presuming you didn’t conspire to kill,” MacKenzie teased, “I’ll turn to our next update. I heard from Pinter again today. He’s finished the post-mortem on Bowers and the toxicology report has come back nil of unusual chemical substances. That tells us he wasn’t under the influence. It also tells us he wasn’t taking any prescribed treatment for the tumour.”
Which, Ryan thought, still didn’t answer the question of whether Bowers was aware of his tumour, because even if he were, he might have refused medication.
“He was sober as a judge when he drove up there and remained that way,” Phillips meditated on the new information. “We can’t find Bowers’ mobile phone, which means we can’t check to see if this unknown somebody sent him a text message telling him to drive out to Heavenfield, but it has to have been something like that.”
“If somebody sent Ryan a message claiming to be Bowers, it is certainly possible that Bowers was sent a message by somebody claiming to be Ryan,” MacKenzie said.
“Or claiming to be Anna,” Phillips pointed out, turning to where she was perched on a window seat. “Bowers trusted you the most, didn’t he?”
Anna nodded sadly.
“However it happened, Bowers must have headed over to Heavenfield because somebody asked him to.”
“There were no defensive marks, no signs of a struggle, which suggests to me that he was caught off guard,” MacKenzie said.
They ruminated on it, for a moment.
“It’s an awful coincidence for the text message to originate practically on Gregson’s doorstep,” Ryan continued. “We might not have the physical evidence, but we can draw a lot of conclusions from that. The man has spent the last six weeks trying to push me out. Maybe he wanted to make damn sure of it, and this is the best way he could find.”
“How do you explain his attack, then?” Anna probed. “His wife’s disappearance?”
Ryan lifted a shoulder in frustration.
“Gregson had help from someone, maybe from his friends in the Circle, but they turned against him.”
“Any word on his wife?”
Ryan shook his head.
“You must have seen the news. Her face has been all over the television and every local paper since lunchtime. We’ve had the usual number of quack calls from people claiming aliens abducted her, but no legitimate sightings yet.”
“I’ve looked into vans matching the description the neighbour gave us,” Phillips put in. “White Transit, old model. The registration that the neighbour took down is fake, so we’re probably dealing with a professional.”
“That’s interesting,” Ryan’s interest piqued. “Your average burglar, even the career ones, don’t usually cross over into the kind of violence we’re looking at. They’re all about a quick ‘in and out’ smash and grab.”
“Aye, it’s true. There’s only a few I know who would know to clean up after themselves like this,” Phillips agreed. “And I’ve already checked out the names on my little list. They’re all accounted for.”
“That’s hardly surprising,” Ryan had to point out. “The type of criminal we’re looking for would have a ready list of people willing to provide an alibi.”
“Be that as it may,” Phillips persevered, “there are a limited number with the kind of network and resources to pull this kind of job off without leaving evidence all over the place.”
“The people we’re looking into, the ones who form part of the Circle, might have endless resources,” Anna contradicted him, softly. “We have to think beyond ‘ordinary’ criminals, now.”
Ryan looked across and his silver eyes locked onto hers. He wanted to gather her up against him, to tell her it would all be alright, but he couldn’t. Not yet. She didn’t even know the worst of it, not until he had shown her Bowers’ name listed inside the copy of Paradise Lost he kept tucked inside his jacket pocket.
“Anna is right. We can look into the usual suspects, but we’re working on a whole new level, with a new cast of characters that we don’t even know about.”
“Somebody knows them,” MacKenzie said. “He knows who they are and he’s doing our work for us. First, Steven Walker, then Daniel Mathieson.”
“The Chief Constable tells me Walker was suicide and Mathieson was another case of prison violence,” Ryan said, idly.
“Bollocks,” MacKenzie declared. “How did Walker manage to stash away a bunch of pills? Violent prisoners finding their way past several prison officers into the solitary unit, then back out again?”
She shook her head, disbelievingly.
“We’ll have to wait to hear from the pathologist down in Nottingham before we’ll know what killed Walker and how. I’ve had a chat with the SIO down there and he’s willing to share information given the previous history. Jeff Pinter is going to look over Mathieson’s body as a priority today and see if we can narrow down a pool of suspects. The warden knows who it was, though,” she said, and her lips flattened. “He’s not being forthcoming, but give me time to work on him. Lowerson has been looking into that pistol which was bought and registered in Mathieson’s name.”
“The sale was made over the telephone,” Lowerson picked up the conversation. “They’re tracing the call now but that will take time. The buyer claimed to be Daniel Mathieson and came into the auction house to make payment in cash later that day.”
“CCTV—” Ryan began.
“Already requested it, sir,” Lowerson was happy to say. “The auction house is retrieving it, as we speak.”
“What about paperwork?”
“It was an antique collectible,” Lowerson provided. “That makes it exempt from the usual firearms regs, and in any case the guy we’re looking for had fake I.D.”
“That’s good, fast work,” Ryan approved. “What about forensics?”
“Faulkner came back with the analytics on the lolly stick and the crisp packet we found at the church. No useable samples whatsoever, they’re a dead end.”
Ryan stood up to stretch out the knots in his back while he thought.
“Now that I’m off the list of suspects, do you have any objection to me taking a look around the church?”
MacKenzie shook her head.
“Not at all.”
Ryan nodded, resolving to do that first thing the next morning.
“What progress has been made to identify the blood samples found at Bowers’ house and on the altar?”
“We had positive DNA matches on the altar, belonging to women listed as missing and potential victims of Patrick Donovan. Next of kin have been informed. We’ll have to wait and hope that their bodies will be found but all we can do is continue to excavate the site where Donovan was active,” MacKenzie answered, glumly.
“As for the blood samples at Bowers’ house, the blood types match what we have on record for Mike and Jennifer Ingles, as you suspected. Faulkner’s team is retrieving the DNA samples taken from their house on the island and he�
�ll update me if and when he can make a conclusive match.”
“Looks pretty cut and dry, if you ask me,” Phillips said, then raised an eyebrow in Ryan’s direction, which was interpreted correctly. It was time to speak openly about Mark Bowers, which meant it was time to lay his cards on the table.
Ryan looked across at Anna and called a break.
* * *
“No. I don’t believe you.”
Anna snapped the words out while her eyes sparked angrily.
“Look, I’m not here to smear the man’s memory. It’s my job to uncover the truth,” Ryan said quietly. He had expected this reaction, so was prepared for what would come.
“Seems to be one and the same thing.”
He took Anna’s shoulders in a gentle grip and steered her across to the sofa, then stepped out of the room. When he returned, he held a pair of nitrile gloves and a small book in his hands.
“Look at this,” he offered, deciding to let the words speak for themselves.
Anna pulled on the gloves mechanically and looked at the book, then up into his fathomless eyes. Her fingers shook but she turned the first page.
It was there, a list of recognisable names. Amongst them, she read her father’s, Steven Walker’s, Mark Bowers’. Her eyes blurred and she fumbled with the next page, her eyes tracking over the passages of Milton’s poem. The rain had stopped, she thought inconsequentially. The rain had stopped, along with her childish dreams. Mark Bowers had been no more a saviour than her father. No more a good man than Steven Walker had been, and he had nearly killed her.
Like a veil lifting, she saw it clearly now.
“He gave me the first glass,” she whispered.
“What’s that?”
“On the island,” Anna explained. “Mark gave me my first drink, the night of the wake, the night I was taken by the Circle. It was drugged, and he was the one who gave it to me.”
Ryan said nothing, he was too angry, but he took her hand in a firm grip to remind her that ordeal was over. She shed no tears. Her profile was hard as she stared out of the window at her own reflection in the glass and her voice was brittle when she spoke.
“He made me believe that he cared for me like a daughter, but he was complicit. He knew what they would do and he let them take me. He helped them.”
Ryan’s jaw worked.
“Yes.”
Anna closed her eyes briefly and there was a sheen of tears when they re-opened, but she did not let them fall. She would cry no more tears for Mark Bowers.
“If he was killed, it was because of his association with the Circle. Judging from this,” her hand hovered over the book lying open on her lap, “I presume Mark was a higher-ranking member of the organisation, if we can call it that.”
She took a deep breath.
“As was my father,” she said, stupefied. She would not have imagined that Andy Taylor possessed the gravitas to command others or to indoctrinate them into a cult, but her vision was clouded through the eyes of a child who had seen him only as a weak alcoholic prone to bouts of violence.
“Yes,” Ryan said again. It was all he could manage.
Anna closed the book, re-wrapped it carefully in plastic and handed it back to him. She leaned across to bestow a kiss, then stood up.
“We need to find out whose name should be written beneath Mark Bowers. They’re in command now, and are probably responsible for all the violence that has happened this week.”
Ryan watched her stride out of the room and up the stairs to re-join his team. Pride and love swelled in his chest, unlike anything he had experienced before. For Anna to suffer such loss, to experience such betrayal, but still to dust herself off and carry on regardless was precisely why he was determined to spend the rest of his life making sure that she would never have to do it again.
* * *
Arthur Gregson was fully lucid as he watched the late evening news. The newscaster delivered his report in solemn tones which barely managed to conceal his excitement at the prospect of weeks of good ratings as he drew out the story of murder and missing women until the people of Northumbria could stand it no more.
For now, they clamoured for as much information as possible.
The people wanted more news on the man found dead up at Heavenfield Church with his brains blown out. More news on the upstanding detective chief superintendent who was brutally attacked and whose wife was missing, presumed dead. They organised community search parties and they appealed for her safe return. They wanted more news on the two killers found dead in their cells. The people whispered about a cult circle and local mafia, about business deals gone bad and prison retribution. They contemplated domestic violence and acts of revenge and came to their own conclusions.
Gregson watched the journalists holding their mics out to passers-by, who tutted and swore that they would hurry to the safety of home and hearth until the police put a stop to all the ‘goings on.’ The area never used to be so violent, they said, not in the old days, but Gregson knew differently. He could have told them that violent crime statistics were the lowest for decades, in fact the lowest for more than a hundred years.
But they were right about one thing: there was a circle. There was a group of people who would never, ever stop, not so long as self-interest and greed remained a deadly sin. There were people who chose to embrace their hedonistic nature rather than try to change it; who passed off their misdeeds as the means to an end, the necessary consequence of working towards a higher cause.
Yes, Gregson thought, the people of Newcastle should hurry home before night fell over the city, if they thought it would save them.
He looked across at the shadowed outline of the police constable manning the door to his private room. He hadn’t seen her before but that could be a good or a bad thing. He presumed that Freeman would be keeping tabs on his movements, that she had been informed the moment he woke up. He thought of Walker and Mathieson and of how steel bars were unable to prevent the Circle reaching out to extinguish their miserable lives.
His chest heaved with weak laughter. It would be the easiest thing in the world to administer an overdose as he lay inert and unable to defend himself. Any one of the nurses, or that police constable, could do it. He didn’t know who Freeman might have recruited for that very purpose.
He closed his eyes but could not sleep.
CHAPTER 22
Thursday, 6th August
Ryan opened his eyes and realised that he had enjoyed an unbroken night’s sleep for the first time in nearly two years, free of nightmares, free from the spectre of anti-anxiety medication. His eyes adjusted to the early morning light shining through the gaps in the curtains and he felt Anna stir beside him. He looked across to where she still slept, her brow furrowed slightly as she dreamt. He wished that he could ease the ache in her heart, that he could lie to her and allow her to keep her fond memories of the past.
But it was not in his nature.
He leaned over to press his lips to her brow and then slipped out of bed to tug on his running gear. With a final look over his shoulder, he padded out of the room and set off for another jog around the city. It was a good habit, and he felt better than he had in a long while.
He followed his usual circuit, raising a friendly hand to the rounds of regulars who wheezed past him, working off the excesses of yesterday. The sky was an unbroken blue this morning and he looked up at it with childish delight, thinking that perhaps it heralded a turning point in their investigation. He didn’t believe in a higher power, but it couldn’t hurt to imagine that there might be some altruistic, omnipotent being watching out for the lowly human race. It sure beat the alternative, which was knowing that all the vice, violence and death plaguing the world happened for no greater reason than just ‘because.’
His feet pounded the pavement and he sped up as he approached the underside of the bridge, working off the adrenaline kicking around in his system. Ahead, another jogger had the same idea, racing towards him from the
opposite direction and he raised a hand in sociable greeting.
Ryan didn’t see it coming.
He felt no prickle on his neck, no inkling of impending doom. Only at the very last moment did he recognise the face of one of the new police constables assigned to CID.
By then, it was too late.
He felt the sharp burn in his side, the pain of flesh ripping open as the knife tore through his thin t-shirt to find the skin beneath. He twisted away and stumbled backwards, clutching the side of his belly, trying to stem the flow of blood as shock reverberated through his body. He looked up and into the eyes of the young man who stared at him, fascinated by his own handiwork.
“No!” Ryan lashed out one-handed to fend off further blows but he read it in the man’s eyes. The decision had already been made.
His legs wanted to buckle but there was no time. In one savage move, the man smashed his fist into the side of Ryan’s head and he felt himself falling backwards into darkness. His heart seemed to stop in his chest, suspended in time before the cold water engulfed him.
On the bridge above, a woman pushed a pram and hoped that the motion would rock her new baby into slumber. In one hand, she sipped at a takeaway coffee while she forced one tired foot in front of the other. Another ten minutes, she thought, that should do it.
She heard the hard clapping sound of Ryan’s body hitting the river water and turned sharply to look over the side of the bridge. She saw him immediately, a tall man in jogging pants and a faded white t-shirt stained with blood, sinking into the murky water.
“Oh my God!”
She looked down at her baby, whose lips quivered at the harsh sound of her voice. She couldn’t leave him unattended. Panicked, she looked around for somebody to help, then she spotted a man standing by the water’s edge.
“Help!” she screamed, waving her hands frantically to attract his attention. “There’s a man in the water! You need to help him!”
Startled, he looked up at her and then backed away from the water before turning to sprint away.
Aghast, the woman watched his retreat and then looked back into the river, where the man had almost disappeared from sight, his body fully immersed in the stagnant water.